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Student faces suit over key to CD locks

SunnComm Technologies, a developer of CD antipiracy technology, said Thursday that it will likely sue a Princeton student who early this week showed how to evade the company's copy protection by pushing a computer's Shift key.

Princeton Ph.D. student John "Alex" Halderman published a paper on his Web site on Monday that gave detailed instructions on how to disarm the SunnComm technology, which aims to block unauthorized CD copying and MP3 ripping. The technology is included on an album by Anthony Hamilton that was recently distributed by BMG Music.

On Thursday, SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs said the company plans legal action and is considering both criminal and civil suits. He said it may charge the student with maligning the company's reputation and, possibly, with violating copyright law that bans the distribution of tools for breaking through digital piracy safeguards.

"We feel we were the victim of an unannounced agenda and that the company has been wronged," Jacobs said. "I think the agenda is: 'Digital property should belong to everyone on the Internet.' I'm not sure that works in the marketplace."

The cases are already being examined by some intellectual-property lawyers for their potential to test the extremes of a controversial copyright law that block the distribution of information or software that breaks or "circumvents" copy-protection technologies.

Several civil and criminal cases based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have been filed against people who distributed information or software aimed at breaking through antipiracy locks. In one, Web publisher Eric Corley was banned by a federal judge from publishing software code that helped in the process of copying DVDs.

In a criminal case, Russian company ElcomSoft was cleared of charges that it had distributed software that willfully broke through Adobe Systems' e-book copy protection.

Both of those cases dealt with software or software code, however. The issue in Halderman's case is somewhat different.

In his paper, published on the Princeton Web site on Monday, the student explained that the SunnComm technique relies on installing antipiracy software directly from the protected CD itself. However, this can be prevented by stopping Microsoft Windows' "auto-run" feature. That can be done simply by pushing the Shift key as the CD loads.

If the CD does load and installs the software, Halderman identified the driver file that can be disabled using standard Windows tools. Free-speech activists said the nature of Halderman's instructions--which appeared in an academic paper, used only functions built into every Windows computer, and were not distributed for profit--meant they would not fall under DMCA scrutiny.

<(bearly) sarcasm>
In other news, all keyboard and computer makers will be sued for making and shipping computers with a shift key as well as microsoft for making it possible to turn off the auto-run feature. Other operating system makers that do not have a auto-run feature or is not enabled by default will also be sued...
</(bearly) sarcasm>

Don\'t SYN us.... We\'ll SYN you..... \"A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.\" - Thucydides

Although i want to agree with crashburn...but something is telling me they might have a chance with the suit, ridiculous as it may sound. The wording on the DMCA is so vague that it seems to cover everything related to copy protection. even if the copy protection in this case is very lame. it so easy to break, my grandmother could break it. and they try to protect it using the DMCA. they just realised that they are not gonna make any $ from this so they try to sue a student who is showing the flaws of the protection.

They already conned BMG into using their method and BMG probably paid for it. they were thinking that more record companies will pay them and then someone showed the flaws on the system and they are pissed.

I think the DMCA should be scrapped. if the protection is so easy to break people should be able to publish ways around the protection. we can read books on lock picking but how come no one is sued for publishing those books. isnt it the same thing?